Summer Is Saved
An outdoor redesign starring a salt-water pool has a formerly restless Oakland family cheering warm weather and saying “Hooray for home!”
Design by Thomas Flint Landscape Design & Custom Pools
Photography by Adam Pass Photography
Text by Donna Rolando
An Oakland family of five no longer faces the stress of having to figure out where to go to beat the heat and still enjoy the outdoors. A pool project completed in 2023 by Thomas Flint Landscape Design & Custom Pools rescued their three-acre yard from an idle existence and turned it into the go-to place for fun in the sun.
“It’s given us a lifestyle we love,” says the father, a busy professional, who appreciates the convenience of a resort atmosphere—without the drive.
Outdated and overdue for TLC, the former backyard hindered hospitality with a small patio, a leaky koi pond and overgrown vegetation, as described by Thomas Flint, owner of the eponymous, Waldwick-based design firm. The makeover his firm accomplished— from pool to pavilion and landscaped lawn—lets this family with three school-age boys live up to its entertainment potential.
“They have a lot of friends and really get a lot of use out of it,” says Flint. “The kids are big into wrestling,” he says, and the family is “really taking advantage of the space,” which means entertaining teammates as well. (The 960-square-foot pool was deliberately designed with an 8-foot-deep end for fun off the mat.)
The enchanting glow on the reflective waters of this 960-square-foot pool is the happy result of bronze fire bowls atop the spa’s stone wall.
For the couple’s wish list, Flint was tasked with providing amenities such as the in-pool sun ledge for lounge chairs (the shallow end’s wide stairs also double as seating) and an outdoor kitchen pavilion for hungry wrestlers and others.
Equally essential was infusing a “wow” factor into the pool with cascading water and the element of fire. Granting their wish, bronze bowls perched atop one of the spa’s granite-veneer walls take center stage with both water and fire. For added oomph, Flint also provided an 8-foot-wide sheer water descent from the spa into the pool.
“There’s a lot of moving water, and it’s very soothing,” he says. It can all be controlled with the touch of a button, like when it’s time to stop the show and heat the spa up to 104 degrees.
Perhaps at no other time is the fire feature more gripping than at dawn or dusk, when the pool’s onyx-gray plaster takes on a dark-bottom effect, generating “really good reflections” on the still water, Flint says. These rich water tones “contrast really nicely” with the Cambridge paver patio, he adds, while bluestone coping borders the pool.
As the project overseer, Flint says he took every pain to make sure that the pool was the ultimate in streamlined elegance and automation. For instance, someone gazing from the house will see the pool’s illumination but not the strategically placed lighting fixtures. In addition, the pool minimizes chemicals with a UV water purification system.
The client’s quest for a visual pop was not neglected in the kitchen pavilion’s design, which gains a unique flair from textured bluestone flooring. Flint explains, “It broke up the monotony of the pavers, so it wasn’t just a sea of stone.”
For ease of outdoor living, Flint designed an L-shaped, granite-veneer kitchen area, where guests at the granite-topped bar can freely converse with the cook without “getting the smoke or heat from the grill in your face,” he says. “Pound for pound, it’s really an efficient and functional way to build an outdoor kitchen.” The pavilion itself matches the colonial home in its asphalt-shingle roof, while providing comfortable seating and shelter under a mahogany ceiling.
Two special stones give the L-shaped kitchen its own personality. The cooking area is made of Adirondack granite veneer, and the floors a natural-cleft, full-color bluestone.
As for challenges, Flint recalls orchestrating “an awful lot of moving parts,” including various utilities, to make the project a success. The redesign also demanded a “full-blown drainage job,” he says, which now gathers runoff, diverts it into an underground tank and then back into the aquifer.
Landscaping—particularly creating an expansive, level lawn—got a boost from the pool-area excavation, which supplied the necessary soil for grading. Additionally, Flint took advantage of the woodland property’s mature trees for privacy but added hydrangeas, boxwoods, grasses and evergreens for a visually calming effect.
Before the pool project, the homeowner dad recalls, “It was stressful and difficult” just finding an outdoor spot to cool off. “Now it feels like we have a resort in the backyard.”
